random notes of a skeptical geologist

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The Catholic Church: a step in the wrong direction

When defenders of evolution try to be sympathetic towards people of faith, and show that evolution and faith are clearly compatible, they often quote what pope John Paul II stated in 1996: that “evolution is more than a hypothesis”. I did that as well a while ago.

Well, that relatively open-minded approach might change, or has already changed, with the new boss in the Vatican. Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, has written an op-ed article for the New York Times, and according to cardinal Schönborn,

Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection – is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.

Pretty disappointing statements from a man of higher learning. And it is ridiculous that a high priest of the Catholic Church is claiming that mainstream biologists (that is, ~99.999 percent of all biologists who matter) are doing ideology, not science. How on earth is he qualified to decide what is science and what is not in biology? Does he have a PhD in biology? No. Did he publish any scientific papers in biology? No. Did he spend most of his life studying, teaching, and spreading religious ideology? Yes. So who is doing science, and who is doing ideology?